ALL MY RELATIONS
We are the relation of God to Itself in everpresent Love. We create this world to love and be loved, sacred relationships within our oneness, within our oneness as God.
We’re much more than solitary beings, much more than we think we are. As in myths or the stories in sacred scriptures, the details of our personal struggles and archetypal journeys lay the foundations of worldwide transmutation, each stone absolutely vital and central to building the entire tabernacle.
About Parents
Early poems from the 1970’s about my parents (after Mother’s passing), before digging in deeper to my serious work. They sound the plaintive overtures of our reconciliation, which continues on later to weld and wed the human and spiritual spheres.
Father
We love each other so much
and we always cry when we part
and we always part
You are a great man
giving your life strength in service to many
as garment for your love
saving the people
in bodily crises
But I know the material
is equally spirit
nothing is accidental
and relying on fact beds
pound for pound
loads down our wakening
There is no one I have saved
so far
Rebel outcast
I am the dutiful son
As you stepped past grandpa
and how he played with words
unsurely I am flying
beyond you
Thank you for fathering me
in this painstaking Way
of the farther wondering Jew
We love each other so much
we always cry
we always part
The Healing Mother Dreams
The healing that we dream
is not the healing Mother dreams
for we imagine energetic happy friendly days
Beneath our heartsick mother
our longing, love-lost mother
beneath all them the Healing Mother dreams
Deep in the night
we sleep and work
dream we are healing Mother
find her waning ghost
wandering rooms of her old world mansion
explain her the meaning of
“Root, Hog, or Die”
hear her try to patch up the family
her breasts not excised
just folded under the armpits
peeping out like waterwings behind
Tired of the day time world
we want only to rest on the clayey soil
become little green hillocks
When we sense our bond with the one Beloved, we know how to love our neighbor. The love with which God loves us all is the love we have to give. There is only the one life. So we truly love God back when we love any of our near ones. We dance together in synchrony, correlate outwardly, to let free unconditional Love flow inwardly.
When we fall into either repeating or resisting our parents’ patterns, we have the opportunity to go through a spiritual process of forgiveness, finding we really have nothing to forgive. Their core is pure. And in their outer conditioned lives, they did the best they could. Beginning from their own parents’ mistakes, they sacrificed themselves for us by making all their revised mistakes, that we in turn can learn from now and modify again. Even if unconsciously, that’s the way it works, entering this world. Let’s honor their suffering in correcting our own faults.
When we feel God loving us, then with our relatives, we can give approval, accept them where they stand, as they need, without wanting to spur them into some change, appreciate where they have tried to help us, and reconcile with them.
If we’ve been waiting for our parents’ help and love and approval, we can now, in our turn as grown-ups, give help and love and approval to them, confident there are no powers outside that can devastate us, they can only help us advance.
We try to be the opposite of our parents and for all our over-reaction wind up apparently the same. We find our beloved complement and end up in conflict. All the necessary pieces are there in the midst of the mess. It’s the unseen, inexorable movement of God that unscrews us from our conditioning, aligning us with holy Love so it pours forth among us.
Our compulsion to repeat childhood situations is a drive to redeem. (Dr. Harville Hendrix reaches the same insight.) Our lives repeat our parents’, trying to repair and transfigure them, and meshing their disparities (such as the complements in my family: Father led with his mind, Mother led with her feelings). And all previous generations are likewise reflected through them. Every broken circuit of affection waits to be completed, so the electricity can flow. Nothing is ever lost---until it is found! For when the Lover salves a situation, the good is extracted and the appearance shell lost. (Nothing is lost; there is self and Self, nothing and No Thing.) The reality in the roles rolls back.
Time is more than linear, swirling and all-present: Those who’ve left this scene are all redeemed.
My son Daveed wrote a story when he was ten: A boy whose father is pushing him to be an Olympic athlete. The father rationalizes that he wants the best for his son. Then he dies and possesses the boy. The hero says, you want me to succeed where you failed, but you’ve never thought of my dreams. The ghost realizes that hopes are for the living, and leaves.
My own father looked recriminating when I was a boy, because he unconsciously wanted me to succeed where he feared to enter, in the spiritual realm. And half-aware, I wanted to save him. These imperatives pass from generation to generation. They are freed up by our becoming conscious of them, understanding and forgiving, as I did by realizing my father’s secret Self-completeness. As my son had done in his story.
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Beloved
Our greatest potential teachers are not only the wonderful wise elders from whom we inherit time-tested advances, but even more so, our beloved companion in life, given us to venture forth together on new missions.
Many negative feelings arise with the ones we love closest, including anger for just being in this world, since we encounter our own worst sorrows and faults through them, and our greatest teacher looks like our greatest enemy. We are each an epic process, not a can of worms. Let’s not fear, God’s love is here. Breathe; unlock the chest of pain.
We return in our marriage to situations of our childhood, for the very purpose of transmuting them, healing, forgiving them, lifting them up. This calls for someone very similar to us, our childhood second self (even embracing our good and bad parents too, as we do), yet at the same time we also marry people who are our complementary opposites, our challenges, so we can try to bridge our gaps and complete and expand ourselves. How everything is its own opposite: In collating both same and opposite, we are all heroic and great punsters besides. By grace, yearning for divine truth, with ruthless honesty we make a breakthrough in the first years; we realize the Other’s innocent, is helping us call up ghosts to free them and ourselves. Our true marriage is made in heaven; we crash on the rocks of karmic scripts and role-casting, only so we can inch forward in our spiritual work like the inexorable tide for the salvation of the world.
Complements: We open out from the Beyond-form through the play of opposites, relationship evolving amidst union. (For instance, some of us by temperament are spontaneous / experimental / lavish, while others are steady / loyal / simple; creative Brahma and sustaining Vishnu. But any two of us are much more intergenerational, multi-layered, mysterious.)
The Other Principle: In mystical marriage, we play together as both matched souls and complements, and we salvage and transmute the sidetracks and miscues of our past which resurface. This way of sacred relationship can be revealed with anyone we meet, this entire human phase of existence is learning to see this process consciously, love with God’s love, expand God.
The healing of the family equals the healing of the world. Both of these, microcosm and macrocosm, are Sacred Relationship in Oneness, are really our love for God, and God’s tangible love for Itself through forgiveness and reconciliation unto Love, opening out the Renewed World.
In God’s timing, we stop looking outside ourself for our good, then our Beloved appears. Consciously participating in a holy relationship, we eventually find ourselves covenanted yet neither obligated nor dependent, eternally free, and tighter, closer than ever; when we cooperate freely, we give most freely, we let God resolve the problems and thrive on the angel food of Love.
Within this rose window of a world, we’re each a unique divine depiction, exquisitely defined in how we love, embracing both our faults and virtues. Through commitment to this meditative work, miracles happen: We learn that the old karma which keeps cropping up is a challenge leading to reconciliation, to help, healing, invention, Greater Love. So we’re undistracted, we relax from our anxieties and prejudice, from trying to get something or make things happen, and let these loving qualities pour out from the Other, we become for each other the flow of God’s love for Itself.
Some pairings are forced marches, practice runs, earlier work, yet those people can be kept as our friends for life; if the situation is abusive and it’s better to break things off, we can continue to pray for them, for the sake of everyone’s united being.
We’re each given the antennae to find our true partners (it could also be a sibling, a friend, a parent or child, a teacher, etc.); imbibing guidance intuitively, we’re led by paths we have not known and sometimes we make a leap of faith, risking everything in the material scene to gain their hand.
Formerly couples had to stay together, even though always at loggerheads. In breaking away from that, we’ve swung to the other extreme. The problems we grapple with in our closeness, our particular angels, bless us if we stick with it til the dawning, yet often we just have to run away, only to find the same unfinished business waiting for us at the next venue.
When the social and family fabric disintegrates, we feel as if what is undone can never be set right again. But if such crumbling couldn’t be countered, any community would have collapsed long ago. Ever so many people fix what was broken. Humanity heals itself endlessly. No one is ever lost. Stepping, we fall forward. Even as we flee, like Jonah, and lie fast asleep, we are secretly calling, our hearts dropping open, and we are being moved closer to receiving the touch of the Holy.
When we do enter a freeing, lifelong heaven-sent partnership, when we realize all relations are sacred and all progress is spiritual progress, then we find we’re changing, to overturn and transform the old, to become aware of our conditioning and reshape the mold. We may be moved to follow the rapid pattern spiraling up on the pinecone or to stick with an indiscernibly slow line: even in such a heaven-sent match, we can dally in the conditioned routines it brings on or be moved to take the chance and do the spiritual/personal work needed to switch gears. Miraculously we both can reach an unknown, totally different new awareness together, and this is a thousand times the wonder of finding our destined mate.
Practically, how do we deal with difficulties? The problem is never the other person. The Other we are meeting is God, which is our One Self. What we do to another, we do to ourSelf, so no one is blessed unless everyone is blessed. Our work is always upon ourselves, releasing others from our karmic exchanges, letting God resolve the issues, til we forgive unto love. Instead of blaming when the Other vents, we hopefully bite our tongue, bite our lips off, not reacting, chipping out of our sand traps. Old material does pop up, yet only to see through it. Instead of blaming others for what they can’t give us, let’s tune in to what they give us freely and acknowledge that as a gift from God. We meditate for our family, asking prayerful help, and outwardly, in humility, bringing forth reconciliation, compassion, mutual forgiveness, spiritual recognition. Simply realizing we love each other---a huge insight. We can’t accomplish this: Giving it up to God. And in seeking God, we discover our truth, we all keep growing. So the profound blessing of our Sacred Relationship deepens over the decades in ways we could never have imagined.
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A pensive or sad child may invisibly be old. This can be salvaged in our later life.
It’s never too late for us to have a happy childhood.
As God loves us: We can love our children unconditionally.
We can work to inwardly recognize our children’s Identity, their divine autonomy: In raising our son, we tried to refrain from all religious proselytizing; as we live and move and have our being in God, they learn from our example, for a small child contains a super-sensitive tape recorder. We can’t escort our children out of this world until they’re ready to travel. We can honor their unique path of development and support them in exploring their shifting interests. We can treat a child as a person. We can encourage their independence. We can forgive their mistakes and ours. We can release them into God’s care to lead them where they need to go.
We ourselves can reach spiritual awareness, not waiting for the next generation to do it for us. Yet this is but a giant step, and our children keep flying beyond.
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Pray in Secret
Our dear ones are sometimes so hurt and fearful that they fend off love. They can’t face their aching needs. God finds the way for our care and prayer to reach those around us.
Our pearls of great price remain unobtrusive, unless someone is explicitly putting out a hand for them. Let’s not cut across an emotional moment with a “spiritual” rejoinder. We can meet the moment with sensitivity and kindness, even while seeing through the appearance world.
All problems are resolved in My Consciousness, in divine Love. When we pray in secret, it’s a great blessing for us to bring our family into our meditation at least once a day, with impersonalizing, non-judgment, non-resistance, assurance, forgiveness, compassion, and the sweetest love in our hearts. We experience this holy love for all, for the one Life appearing, seeking no return. We recognize the self-sufficient Identity of each one. We honor the unique missions wrapped within our struggles and faults, we are grateful for our mercurial steadfast interlocking lives. This family is not mine; we are God’s family. And after prayer, outwardly we reconcile where it’s needful, giving up the demand to be right. We discuss unspoken problems, the feelings and needs of us all; we can clean out our back rooms. We love with God’s love; if we harm, we have work to do. Above all, just as we sacrificed by even entering this world, so we now surrender every opinion or desire, and trustingly lean into God, watching for Its clarifications, Its signs telling how to go on. So we break through, from karmic law to grace. A meditation: This family is one, God’s Love unfolding in a kaleidoscope dance, holding hands always, even past the end of the world. I release my family of any obligation. God’s Love is our sufficiency in all things. God’s love and forgiveness and healing give I unto You.
Beloved, when we can’t meditate, when we can’t go on, then Invisible care for us is still flowing, the stream that wears through the stone.
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Beloved, the path to our salvation runs alongside the course of our conditioning, the work we are dealing with: our personality type, family karma, social mores. So sometimes our conditioning gets the upper hand, disguising itself as spiritual practices. Consider: Are we unattached and non-interfering, or aloof and withdrawn? Visionary, or fooling ourselves? Steady or compulsive? Do we change, or follow our parents’ mistakes, in that endless generational repetition? Do we endorse society’s inequities as if they were divine dispensations?
Even if we’ve developed a god fashioned in such personal images, we still can turn and center in our contemplative prayer, contacting actual Omniscience, and be led to see what’s happening--- sort things out, pick up the pieces, rearrange them--- and do better next time. Benefiting from our mistakes, we advance, really meeting with You.
As we ascend in Consciousness and obtain an aerial perspective, we can look back over our life and see the conditioning or karma that was at work, and lift off the track of our unconscious perseverations, our replays. So we gain psychological insight and healing which would never have been possible by addressing our problems at just their own level. We seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, the rest is added unto us.
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Widening the Circle
People tell us about their discords, courting judgment. If we heard the other side of the story, it could appear entirely different. We’re tempted to give advice. But when someone calls us about that awful other person, we’re all coming for spiritual teaching and the blessing of Recognition, seeing our one Life waltzing.
Groups. We move in different sets, which are often tracked into separate worlds on the same planet: ethnic, gender, economic, ideologies, etc. While we are each utterly unique, we are mixtures, conjuries of these sets. Everyone we meet blends into these groupings. Some sets of relations lead us quickly upwards---as with our brothers and sisters of this inner work. All lead upwards in spirals, all contribute essentially.
The lines in the water. We are not really separate entities or sealed cliques. The water flows along irrespective of the demarcations. Right now and through eternal time, we aren’t confined in a box, everyone’s connecting within this all-inclusive Oneness.
More principles to employ in our encounters: First, we get centered in the only Life. We prioritize, getting the big picture. Realizing there’s no power outside of God, another person cannot “make” us get upset. Impersonalizing, we might question an action or plan in conversation, but we don’t criticize the Other person. Instead of blame, compassion and Love. We unite within the freedom of our spiritual estate; instead of ulterior motives, altruism is our Enlightened self-interest. Miracles: any problem is our mission, and can be turned to gold, to bless the world. Reconciliation (which we’ll study more): God has brought this situation, and God is on the field, so we can do nothing of ourselves, and with all our struggling our choiceless choice is just to play follow the leader.
The Other Principle: In each relationship, we restore, heal and integrate and bring the past along, which is emblematic of this Great Work we’re all embarked on together.
If we want psychological help, it’s completed by divine knowledge. Beyond coping with the “unavoidable disaster from outside,” we can see miracles override it with healing and salvation. And complete forgiveness, great peace, and rapprochement with our conditioning, are only found through Self-realization. For the purpose of our lives leads through our finite sense and on to other realms, God expanding Itself into the Renewed World, into Sacred Relationship within Oneness.
“Oh-may-tahk-way-ah-say.” The Lakota, the Sioux call deity “All my relations.”